Hydroponic growth test of maize sprouts to evaluate As, Cd, Cr and Pb translocation from mineral fertilizer and As and Cr speciation.

The present study proposes a maize sprouts hydroponic growth model to evaluate the As, Cd, Cr and Pb translocation from multinutrient fertilizer and to do speciation of As and Cr in this fertilizer and As in parts of plant in order to predict their phytoavailability. X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) was employed to speciate As and Cr directly on fertilizer solid sample. Arsenate (AsV) and a solid solution of FeCrO3 were the major species identified in the samples. The sprouts were hydroponically cultivated in water, fertilizer slurry and fertilizer extract media. Concentrations of As, Cd and Pb measured on leaves of maize sprouts ranged from 0.061 to 0.31 mg kg-1, whereas Cr was not translocated to the aerial parts of sprouts. High performance liquid chromatographic with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS) analysis was used to determine As speciation in maize sprouts, as well as in the fertilizer extracts and slurries. Arsenate was the only species identified in the initial fertilizer extract and this information is in agreement with the XANES results. However, the reduction of arsenate to arsenite was observed in extracts and slurries collected after sprout growth, probably due to the action of exudates secreted by plant roots. Arsenite was the predominant species identified in sprouts, the high phosphate concentration in the medium may have contributed to reduce arsenate phytoavailability.

Analytical Capabilities of the Community Bureau of Reference Protocol to Estimate the Mobility of Nutrients and Toxic Elements from Mineral Fertilizer.

The sequential extraction procedure of the Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) was applied to investigate the mobility of potentially toxic elements (As, Cd, Cr, and Pb) and nutrients (P, Ca, Mg, Cu, Fe, Mn, and Zn) in a multinutrient mineral fertilizer based on phosphate rocks supplemented with 10% (w w-1) micronutrient mixture (raw material used as a micronutrient source). For both samples, As and Cd were more mobile, whereas Cr remained in the solid residue. A higher mobility of Pb was observed in the micronutrient mixture; however, the high concentration of P (8.3% w w-1) in the fertilizer could have decreased Pb mobility as a result of Pb3(PO4)2 formation. The nutrients had great mobility, except Fe, which remained almost totally in the residual fraction in both samples. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and energy dispersive spectroscopy analyses of solid residues showed that the ways in which elements were distributed in the sample particles could affect their mobility.

Evaluation of calcium alginate beads for Ce, La and Nd preconcentration from groundwater prior to ICP OES analysis.

Analytical methods for the determination of rare earth elements (REE) in natural waters by plasma spectrochemical techniques often require sample preparation procedures for analytes preconcentration as well as for removing matrix constituents, that may interfere on the analytical measurements. In the present work, calcium alginate (CA) beads were used for the first time aiming at Ce, La and Nd preconcentration from groundwater samples for further determination by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP OES). Test samples were analyzed in batch mode by transferring a 40mL test portion (pH=5±0.2) into a 50mL polyethylene flask containing 125mg CA beads. After 15min contact, the analytes were quantitatively extracted from the loaded CA beads with 2.0mL of 1.0molL-1 HCl solution for further determination by ICP OES, using Ce (II) 456.236, La (II) 379.478 and Nd (II) 430.358nm emission lines. The proposed approach is a reliable alternative for REE single-stage preconcentration from aqueous samples, as it provided accurate results based on the addition and recovery analysis of groundwater. The results obtained by the proposed method were also compared with those from reference method based on inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and no significant differences were observed after applying the Student's t-test at 95% confidence level.